


I Don't Forgive

by Birdegg



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Cultural Differences, Katara is my favorite can you tell, Period-Typical Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 14:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22497277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdegg/pseuds/Birdegg
Summary: There’s more people in Ba Sing Say than Katara knows how to process. She’s not thinking when she comments on the population with surprise in her voice. Toph snickers.Not every where’s a hick town, princess.Sokka changes the subject, blue eyes flicking uneasily to Katara’s expression.She stays angry for a long time afterward.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 168





	I Don't Forgive

**Author's Note:**

> Katara is fueled by anger, and she's absolutely valid.

Across the world, buildings aren’t made of snow and ice. They’re stone, clay, brick. They have painted roofs and door with windows in them. Flower pots hang outside the front of the buildings, where small bugs gather. 

It’s all she and her brother can do not to stare. Aang notices their shocked looks, eyes wide and surprised, and laughs. He doesn’t mean anything by it; Aang is a nomad after all. He values all forms of people and their different cultures. Sokka sputters and comes up with some bumbling excuse for his awe, trying still to sound cool. Katara blushes, darker skin turning slightly redder, face warm and uncomfortable. Aang gives her a knowing look, face friendly. Katara glares at the ground as her brother continues, blood pumping through her veins. It’s just embarrassment.

There’s more people in Ba Sing Say than Katara knows how to process. She’s not thinking when she comments on the population with surprise in her voice. Toph snickers. _Not everywhere’s a hick town, princess_. Sokka changes the subject, blue eyes flicking uneasily to Katara’s expression. 

There are only elderly woman and children left in the southern tribe. When their snow house (-Aang laughs-) break or are weathered down, Katara and Sokka fixed them without any help. The people, the ones that Katara could count easily (-hicks-) were tired, barely able to hunt for the entire tribe. The artic is not an easy place to raise a child. As the little ones get littler and frailer, Sokka and Katara hunt for longer periods of time. If the children die, they will be the last generation. The men are gone. She looks out and sees the pitiful fossils of something that must have been great once. The children are frailer. Sokka gives them weapons, because a wolf does not leave a carcase for long. The children are weaker. Katara’s great aunt dies of “old age” (starvation).

Prince Zuko lands his bright red ship against the shores, smashing the walls Sokka built for months. There are more soldiers on the ship than people in the tribe. Katara thinks they have come to finish us off. Our death will be quicker she thinks, with a deep disgust in herself, directed at the world. 

Zuko does not say anything about her naivety in the ways of true civilization. She wonders if he saw the southern water tribe more clearly than Aang did.

He apologizes to her. _For what you bastard? For the abduction of our only water benders? For the murder of my mother? For the war that took my father and my future? For the years of near starvation? For the loss of my culture? For stealing my dead mothers necklace? For having a hand in Aang’s death? For burning Tophs feet?_ Instead she says:

“I don’t forgive you.” and leaves it at that.


End file.
